Jeff Parker

DC's upcoming Hanna-Barbera line has already grabbed plenty of interest with its offbeat takes on classics like Scooby Doo and Wacky Races, but for a lot of readers, the most hotly anticipated title is the one that has the closest connection to its cartoon roots. In Future Quest, Jeff Parker and Evan "Doc" Shaner, the team behind last year's Convergence: Shazam miniseries, are reuniting for a story big enough to require virtually all of the Hanna-Barbera adventure characters. On the eve of the book's launch this week, ComicsAlliance spoke to Parker and Shaner about the origins of the project, the characters they learned to love, and why they wanted to give Birdman something he'd never had before: a personality.

DC Comics’ upcoming Hanna-Barbera line of comics is one of the boldest decisions Warner Bros has made with those properties in a long time, and DC seem committed to treating the individual series as just as important as its main line of superhero books. With veteran creators like Keith Giffen on the books, DC is throwing its full weight behind the new line, and has unveiled new variant covers for Scooby Apocalypse and Future Quest by superstar artists like Steve Rude, Neal Adams and Bill Sienkiewicz.

Listen, I gotta tell you about this dream I had last night. It was so weird 00- DC comics had launched a line of comics based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but they were doing these completely bonkers takes on all of them. Like, Scooby-Doo was set in the apocalypse and Scooby had a techno-monocle that allowed him to communicate through emojis, and Wacky Races was mashed up with Mad Max: Fury Road, and they even got one of the designers from the movie for it, and there was a big crossover with Space Ghost and Jonny Quest. And the weirdest thing of all was that the Flintstones were just the Flintstones, but drawn by Amanda Conner. Bizarre, right? Wait a second... I'm just catching up on the news, and --- holy cats. It wasn't a dream. DC Comics is actually doing a Hanna-Barbera line with post-apocalyptic Wacky Races and emoji-monocle Scooby-Doo. This is actually happening.

I have been pretty open about this recently, but the current story arc in Justice League United is basically the most exciting thing going in comics. Not only does it involve a makeshift team of Stargirl, Steel, Robotman and Vandal Savage investigating a rift in time that's pulling in soldiers from a century of wars into a single village in France, and not only does that mean that we're also getting Sgt. Rock, Easy Company, the Creature Commandos, Frankenstein, GI Robot, GI Zombie, another Vandal Savage, and an unexpected ally in Hans von Hammer, the Enemy Ace, but the last issue ramped things up a considerable amount of notches when OMAC showed up. Now, Jeff Parker and Paul Pelletier are setting out to answer a question that readers --- read: me --- have been asking for years: What does it take to knock out the One Machine Attack Construct? The answer, as you will see in a preview below, is double robot punches.

Justice League United may not be long for this world, but Jeff Parker and Paul Pelletier are definitely making the most of the time they have. This month, in Justice League United #14, the characters in Alanna Strange and Stargirl's hand-picked team of superhuman operatives have jumped headfirst into a time-tossed battlefield where wars from across the century are collapsing into a single endless conflict. So just in case you missed it, I thought you should all know that there's a comic out there this week with Batgirl, Steel, Robotman, Vandal Savage, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, the Creature Commandos, GI Zombie, GI Robot, Enemy Ace and.... well, there's one more that might be a spoiler, but I can tell you I'm pretty excited about it. So, spoilers follow!

This week at Comixology, Dynamite has a big sale on their "Greatest Hits," and as you might expect from the title, there's a lot of really good stuff in there. So good, in fact, that you probably don't need me to tell you about it --- being able to grab twelve issues of American Flagg for nine bucks, for example, is probably something that you already know is a good idea. But if you're on the hunt for a buried treasure and you've got a spare picture of Abraham Lincoln burning a hole in your pocket, then you need to do yourself a favor and pick up Jeff Parker and Marc Laming's Kings Watch, one of the best (and most underrated) crossovers of the past few years.

Ever since DC's Batman '66 comic started adding 1960s-style versions of modern villains to the show's existing roster of arch-criminals, there's one that I've been hoping for more than any other, one that seemed like it was virtually inevitable. And now, it is finally happening: We are getting Luchador Bane. Hot on the heels of the '66 debut of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, the solicitation for the print version of Batman '66 #27 has revealed that Batman will be heading to Mexico to apprehend the Riddler and find himself duking it out with Bane in the wrestling ring. In other words, we may have discovered the perfect comic book.

Back when I was working at a comic book store, one of our favorite lunch break timewasters was trying to come up with the most improbable-yet-awesome Justice League lineup that we could. We'd throw our favorite characters in there, from OMAC to John Constantine, with friendly arguments over which one would work better, but we never once thought it was something that would ever actually happen. This week, DC released a "Sneak Peek" preview of Jeff Parker, Travel Foreman and Jeromy Cox's Justice League Unlimited, kicking off after the events of Convergence, and, well, it's happening. OMAC and John Constantine are on the Justice League together, and they're not alone. They're bringing in everyone. EVERYONE.

Ever since the first issue of DC's Batman '66 comic climaxed with an honest-to-Gotham airplane chase scene that ended in a fiery explosion, it's been pretty obvious that one of the goals of that book is to do things that they never could have done on the TV show. As much as the comic has captured the tone of the series, it's also made it a point to go bigger, throwing in bigger set pieces for the action, exotic locations and stories that literally go to new places that we never saw on the show. But there's one other way that the comic has been expanding on the show that's even more interesting than just pitting Gotham City's arch-criminals against a giant crime-fighting robot. Over the past two years, writer Jeff Parker and a rotating cast of artists that includes Joe Quinones, Jonathan Case, Rubén Procopio, Sandy Jarrell and Giancarlo Caracuzzo have been introducing villains that never appeared on the show to the world of Batman '66, bringing pop-art takes of characters like Harley Quinn and Killer Croc to the comics. And they've been doing it in a way that's absolutely fascinating.

If you've been wondering why I've been a little more excited lately, why bird songs are a little sweeter or why food tastes a little better, it's because the latest storyline of DC's digital-first Batman '66 comic has involved Batman and Batgirl heading to Japan to take on Lord Death Man. Jeff Parker, Sandy Jarrell and Jordie Bellaire have done a pretty amazing job creating story that I wish would've happened on television, but giving it the unlimited budget for stuff like a new Japanese Batmobile and an army of ninjas, and it's pretty great. To get some insight into just how it all happened, I spoke to Parker for his thoughts on bringing in other period-specific villains, why Lord Death Man is so much more exciting than his original American counterpart, and ideas for other non-Gotham location that could use a visit from the Caped Crusaders!